Big Changes At White Wolf Following Controversy

Following an online backlash regarding the content of their recent publications, White Wolf Publishing has just announced some big changes, including the suspension of the Vampire 5th Edition Camarilla and Anarch books, and a restructuring of management.

White Wolf's Shams Jorjani made the following announcement about an hour ago:

"Hello everyone,

My name is Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development at Paradox Interactive and interim manager at White Wolf Publishing. I wanted to inform you of some changes that will be implemented at White Wolf, starting immediately.

Sales and printing of the V5 Camarilla and Anarch books will be temporarily suspended. The section on Chechnya will be removed in both the print and PDF versions of the Camarilla book. We anticipate that this will require about three weeks. This means shipping will be delayed; if you have pre-ordered a copy of Camarilla or Anarchs, further information will follow via e-mail.

In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity. The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.

Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.

The World of Darkness has always been about horror, and horror is about exploring the darkest parts of our society, our culture, and ourselves. Horror should not be afraid to explore difficult or sensitive topics, but it should never do so without understanding who those topics are about and what it means to them. Real evil does exist in the world, and we can’t ever excuse its real perpetrators or cheapen the suffering of its real victims.

In the Chechnya chapter of the V5 Camarilla book, we lost sight of this. The result was a chapter that dealt with a real-world, ongoing tragedy in a crude and disrespectful way. We should have identified this either during the creative process or in editing. This did not happen, and for this we apologize.

We ask for your patience while we implement these changes. In the meantime, let’s keep talking. I’m available for any and all thoughts, comments and feedback, on shams.jorjani@paradoxinteractive.com."

White Wolf is currently own by Paradox Interactive, who acquired the World of Darkness rights in 2015 from previous owner CCP (who you might know from Eve Online) whose plans for a WoD MMO failed to bear fruit.

The recent Camarilla and Anarch books have met widespread criticism. The former, Camarilla, includes a section which appears to trivialise current real-life events in Chechnya, where the LGBTQ community is being persecuted, tortured, and murdered and uses that current tragedy as a backdrop for the setting. This comes after the company was forced to deny links to neo-Nazi ideology. White Wolf recently announced that "White Wolf is currently undergoing some significant transitions up to and including a change in leadership. The team needs a short time to understand what this means, so we ask for your patience as we figure out our next steps" and this appears to be the result of that decision.

 

[Gradine]

Ah, you see, it isn't all that complicated on such points...

If you do something, and a bunch of people hear about it, and show up to tell you that you were being an insensitive, ill-informed jerk, whether or not you have potential business with them is not material in determining if you were, in fact, being an insensitive, ill-informed jerk. They are not wrong just because they weren't going to give you money.

Worrying about who is a customer, and who isn't, is a business decision. But the core issue here isn't a business problem - it is an ethical problem. If your basic answer to ethical questions is to check your bottom line, you have probably missed the point of the ethical question.

One of several reasons why a deliberate boycott is a very different (and much more effective) thing than just not being a customer in the first place.

 

[dco]

I think they did a big mistake from an editorial point of view.

From the ethics point of view...sorry, this is fiction and Vampire the Masquerade always have had vampires behind all kind of historical events in the world, they encourage people to do the same with their stories and lot of GMs and fans writting stories have done it. Chicago by night which was the first setting already had vampires controlling a clash between indians and the United States army, their machinations went from there to the election of the mayor 4-5 years before the book release.

If we think that actually some people find offensive that an indian character wears a feather in a videogame perhaps Vampire the Masquerade should have never existed. It can also be extrapolated to a lot of other games, mental disorders, suicides, mass shootings... don't buy Kult, there is a cheap fictional explanation for lots of horror and suffering.

 

[billd91]

It's not that simple for corporations, though. Corporations are quite literally law bound to maximize profits whenever possible, so an ethical problem that is going to negatively affect the bottom line if the company does the ethical thing must be ignored, or your stock holders can sue the hell out of you for violating your fiduciary duty. Smaller businesses have the luxury of considering ethics.

No, that's really not the case (unless, apparently, you have all the limited moral awareness of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economic brutalism). Responsibility to the shareholders is only one branch of a corporation's ethical responsibility. There are academic disciplines and comprehensive corporate programs devoted to broader views of corporate ethics than his ilk.

 

[Ovinomancer]

All of the works you name have cheesed people off, but they differ from this WoD case in (at least) one central element - they are all entirely fiction.

The WoD issue is about taking the *actual events* that happened to specific people that actually exist (and may still be alive) and then making the source of their suffering fictional.

So... not much of an analogy to be had. The ethical question isn't, "Did I cheese people off?" The ethical question is around what you did to cheese people off.

The central theme of Lolita is not fictional. Neither that of Catcher. Or Verses. They are all true Scotsmen.

 

[Umbran]

Corporations are quite literally law bound to maximize profits whenever possible

No they are not. Period. End sentence. This is just plain, old fashioned factually incorrect. Sorry.

You seem to equate, "Do fiduciary duty" to "maximize profits". Fiduciary duty is a duty to act in the best interest of another - as best you know and understand at the time.

For a corporation, for example, the best interest of shareholders is probably not "maximize corporate profits" but is instead, "maximize shareholder value". But, a *lot* of things can influence shareholder value - f'rex, having the company's name go down the toilet due to a controversy probably doesn't do a lot for shareholder value. And there will be a judgement call on how to achieve the value.

A real lawyer can probably do better, but my understanding is that fiduciary duty is really only in play when you can show that the alleged offender took an action they *knew* was not in the best interest of their client/employer. Like, "I am your financial advisor, and I encourage you to buy a junk stock because I am getting a great commission on it." Making a judgement call on a matter of public relations? Not an issue, unless you say, "I hate these guys, and I'm gonna actively antagonize them, even if that makes the company lose money!"

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Rygar]

Ah, you see, it isn't all that complicated on such points...

If you do something, and a bunch of people hear about it, and show up to tell you that you were being an insensitive, ill-informed jerk, whether or not you have potential business with them is not material in determining if you were, in fact, being an insensitive, ill-informed jerk. They are not wrong just because they weren't going to give you money.

Worrying about who is a customer, and who isn't, is a business decision. But the core issue here isn't a business problem - it is an ethical problem. If your basic answer to ethical questions is to check your bottom line, you have probably missed the point of the ethical question.

Are you suggesting that businesses should be more concerned with ethics than revenue? How does that work? Since appeasing one political/religious group is certain to offend at least one other political/religious group, how could businesses function since every action is guaranteed to generate outrage? Are there only particular political/religious groups that they should listen to?

 

[Umbran]

The central theme of Lolita is not fictional. Neither that of Catcher. Or Verses. They are all true Scotsmen.

If you want to say that children do get abused, and that religion is important to people, sure.

But "theme" in literature is entirely arranged. Real lives don't have "themes" - the events in those books are entirely fabricated to produce themes. And, more important, while there are alienated young people out there, Holden Caulfield does not exist outside of Catcher.

Take *real* people, who have suffered, and make it so the known and historical source of their suffering is not only fictional, but outright not possible in our universe? While some of the victims are still alive? Not the same. Sorry.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Corporations are quite literally law bound to maximize profits whenever possible, so an ethical problem that is going to negatively affect the bottom line if the company does the ethical thing must be ignored, or your stock holders can sue the hell out of you for violating your fiduciary duty. Smaller businesses have the luxury of considering ethics.

That’s...not accurate.

Some methods of profit maximization are actually illegal, for a variety of reasons. What they are in particular depends on the business in question. So ethical concerns exist for all companies. Ignore them, and CEOs and other corporate officers can be fired; possibly find themselves in real, actual jails. This is especially true for multinationals.

Further, discretion is one of the defining powers of being a business executive. A decision that- on initial analysis- may not be profit maximizing NOW may in fact better position a company to compete at a future time. Or it may not. But in order to win, anyone bringing a shareholder’s suit is going to have to prove that the decision makers involved did not properly exercise their business acumen. That’s a difficult standard of proof.

 

[Eltab]

In the end, if the company capitulates to the "Boycott" and it was largely a group of non-customers who were outraged, the company has a serious problem. If they change the product to meet the demands of the outrage by non-customers and it runs counter to the desires of the actual customers except for the one who took offense, then there's a very high probability that the company will make a change to the product to satisfy one customer, a lot of people who still have no intention of buying the product, and they've now lost some/many/all of their other customers.

McDonalds french fries.
Some years ago, the company changed the recipe (to lower-fat) in response to pressure from 'healthy eating' persons / groups. A number of whom responded to news of the change with words to the effect of "Well, I would never eat there anyways."